Category — Uncategorized

Valery and I were emailing after she mentioned that she re-read her own blog, and it occurred to me that I have never done this.  I’ve re-read specific posts, and sometimes, if I’m looking for something, I’ll read the posts around it.  But I’ve never started at the beginning and read back through it as the story of my life.

Which is, you know, what it is.  It’s the story of what I’ve thought about for the last 12+ years.  A quarter of my life.  But I’ve never gone back to the first post and read from June 2006 until now, seeing how those thoughts have changed or reliving moments.  Who knows what I’ll find in there that I’ve forgotten about?

Have you ever read your own blog from beginning to end?

In the same week, I had one friend muse via email that she wants to start blogging again and another muse that she wants to stop blogging.  In both cases, it came down to people feeling like no one was hearing their words.  Or, at the very least, no one was responding to them, hence why the blogger thought the Facebook grass was greener, and the Facebooker remembered the blogging grass as greener.

Here are my thoughts.

I’ll start with Facebook.  I’m not against Facebook.  I think of my blog as my house, and I think of my social media accounts as additional homes I have in other cities.  It makes sense, in that case, to rent apartments that require little upkeep in those other cities since my blog — my home — is my main living space on the Web.  That’s sort of what you’re doing on social media platforms: you’re renting space that you’re paying for with your content and personal information.

Some people are happy to live light or not deal with the stress that comes from owning a home.  But I’m not that person.  I like having my home, and I like having my blog.  I don’t think I’d be happy posting my thoughts solely on social media sites in the same way that I never loved renting apartments.  Again, I realize that is me.

We trust that people will see our Facebook posts, and that’s not always the case.  Some people whom you’re connected to on the site will not go on the platform, so they will not see it.  Some people will not have the algorithm show it in their feed, so they will not see it.  Some people will have your status in their feed, but there’s so much information on there and it moves so quickly that they’ll scroll over it without interacting with it.

And here’s the thing: they don’t even know that they’re missing it.  Facebook shows them one of your status updates and they believe they’re seeing all of your status updates.  So they don’t know what they don’t know.  Unless you are opening and closing every single one of your friend’s profile pages, you have no clue how many posts you’re missing daily.  And as much as Facebook wants to believe that they can predict what you want to read, someone of those posts you miss will be important to you or to that person.

Which brings us to blogs.  What I like about blogs is that I see every post.  If I like a blog, I enter their URL in my reader so I am notified when a new post goes up.  I sometimes read the post in the reader, and I sometimes hop over to the blog itself if I’m on my computer so I can comment.  Reading on a mobile device makes that difficult, so while I know blog readership has fallen over the years, I also believe that mobile devices keep us from knowing the whole story.  There are more people reading than people know by looking at their stats.

The Internet was a different place 12 years ago.  There wasn’t a lot to read, so we read everything.  We went back to the same blog post several times, reading the comment section to see how people were reacting to it during the day.  We had long conversations in there.  But now, the information flows so quickly, it is easier not to return.  But the one thing that hasn’t changed is that I visit each blog, one at a time.

Because that’s the biggest difference between social media sites and blogs; why I keep writing mine and why I keep reading them.  Because I like visiting one person at a time.  I go to their blog and see what they have to say, and then I go to the next blog and join that conversation.  I give one person at a time my complete attention.  On Facebook, it’s like trying to visit 100 people at once, and not doing a good job connecting with any one of them because there are so many people around.

I miss blogs.  I miss specific blogs — A Little Pregnant, Infertile Fantasies, Vee from Three Little Birds, Too Many Fish to Fry (she still sometimes has infrequent posts) — and I miss blogs in general.  My reader is still full at the end of the day because I subscribe to so many of them, but it’s not like it was back in the old days when there were so many of us.

Which blogs do you miss?  And will you ever go back if you stopped writing?

When I was little, I saved my Halloween candy, eating it for months afterward.  And when I read the Magicians trilogy the first time, I only allowed myself 10 or so pages per day, switching to a different book when my daily allotment was up.  In other words, I hold onto things that I really love and stretch them out for as long as possible because I don’t want to consider the day that I won’t have that thing in front of me anymore.

I was dumbfounded a week or two ago when Netflix cancelled their fourth most popular show — Daredevil.  Why wouldn’t they renew something that was clearly well-loved?  But they seemed to be cancelling all Marvel shows left and right, so it made sense in the moment that even a popular show wouldn’t survive the purge if they were shedding Marvel properties.

But then I read a hypothesis that Netflix puts more (different?) emphasis on binge watching.  So regardless of whether or not a show is widely watched (popular), it looks at how quickly a show is consumed.

But what about people like me?  I specifically save episodes BECAUSE I like a show.  I watch things I enjoy slower because I want to savour them as much as possible.  Sure, there are things we watch quickly, but on the whole, the more I like something, the slower I go.  I haven’t even seen the final episode of the second season of The Crown yet because ChickieNob and I are too sad to let that cast go.

I don’t want the speed in which I consume something to dictate whether or not I get to keep it.  I don’t fit in this quickly moving world.

Do you like to consume shows (books, etc) quickly or spread it out?

Until this week, I avoided the book When Breath Becomes Air.  Not because it sounded terrible; just the opposite.  I heard it was amazing — moving and well-written, a Pulitzer finalist and on everyone’s year-end “best of” list.  It’s a surgeon’s first-hand account of being diagnosed with cancer and all that came before and after.

I avoided the story because I could avoid it.  Meaning, I had the choice to not face his difficult story and accept the gift of his words by not picking up the book.  This is something that his loved ones couldn’t do.  It’s something millions upon millions of people don’t get to do: Avoid the story.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the posts I wrote a while back about diversity and reading lists and this privilege fits in that discussion, too.  As a reader, I get to choose what I read, therefore, I can avoid all the stories I don’t want to hear.  That I’m scared to contemplate.

This is different from deciding not to read something because the subject matter doesn’t interest me (example: me + historical romances… except Outlander… I’m strange interested in reading Outlander) or because I don’t know about the book.  This is more akin to turning my head and pretending not to see something.

But what if someone said to me: “I’m not going to read your story because infertility is sad, and I just don’t want to feel sad.  So I’m going to accept that I may go through life knowing nothing about infertility, but I’m fine with that because not being able to build a family is depressing.”

Okay, by not reading When Breath Becomes Air, I’m not saying those hurtful words to his family’s face.  (A writer — or their descendants — has no clue who is reading and who is not reading or why unless told.)  But making the conscious choice to avoid his book just because I believe it will make me sad accomplishes the same thing on my end.  There are so many stories that I’ll never encounter because there are too many people and not enough time.  I accept that.  But not encountering, again, is very different from avoiding.

The book went on sale, and I bought it because the writing was amazing.  While it was sad, I didn’t feel sad reading most of it.  Instead, I found my finger (it’s an e-book) underlining interesting thoughts or phrasing that I wanted to be able to find in the future.  Up until the end, it was much more about living than it was about dying in the same way that infertility can be more about yearning than it is about losing.

I’m glad I abided with his story, not just because it made me understand death better.  As his wife writes in the end on page 151, “Paul’s decision not to avert his eyes from death epitomizes a fortitude we don’t celebrate enough in our death-avoidant culture.”

Are there any books you’ve avoided reading because you’re concerned how you’ll feel as you move through the pages?

I recently clicked on an article, thinking I was going to get a great productivity piece and instead encountering an explanation for my obsessive impulse to do things now.  Which may sound like a good thing — I don’t wait to take care of tasks that I want or need to do (the same does not extend towards tasks that other people suggest for me) — but usually translates to me feeling anxious because everything has to be done NOW.  This 18-hour project needs to be completed TODAY, not in small chunks over many days.  This vacuum cleaning needs to happen THIS SECOND instead of waiting until it makes sense later in the day.

I get a lot done.  I annoy people sometimes in the process, including myself.  I annoy myself.  I worry a lot — most of it needlessly.  Things usually work out if you just wait for things to unfold instead of trying to nudge it along.

But waiting = worrying.  Doing = controlling.

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On the other hand, I really do love this piece of advice: Make all your resolutions immediate.

Josh and I made a huge goal for ourselves last summer, which we have tried numerous times to begin without much success.  The reality is that it’s goal-focused: Do X so you can be ready for Y down the road.  We don’t do it because it’s so easy to put off anything that doesn’t have to take place now.  I’ve been trying to structure it in my mind in terms of now, in terms of the day-to-day.

And this: “Everything feels urgent and important. Resolve to do something — anything — immediately.”  Sometimes that’s it: just accomplishing one thing per day, making it urgent and checking it off the list, can be the difference between feeling productive and feeling like the day has gone by without note.

Or, maybe it’s this: make all your resolutions do-able.  Make them things you can take action on vs. end goals.  Write five pages per day is an action.  Publish a book is an end goal.  I need to move away from thinking in terms of end goals and realize that I’m missing the here-and-now by worrying so much about what’s far down the road.